…to find what you lost as a child and regain it. It’s a brilliant idea and that echos through myths all over the world. That means you have to regain your capacity, once you are disciplined and you know how to do something, you have to regain your capacity for play and sort of for wide eyed wonder. And that’s maybe the child like part of your spirit and the reintegration of that child like part with the adult grown up part revivifies the adult grown up part and allows the child to manifest itself in a disciplined way in the world.”

If you stopped working today and continued to live at your current standard of living, how long would you last? If you could last a month, then you are one month wealthy. If you could last five years, then you are five years wealthy. And if you could last forever, then you are indefinitely wealthy.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Many people interpret this to mean, ‘If I need $4,000 per month to live on and I have $400,000 saved up, then I am 100 months wealthy.’

However, there is a much better way to look at this concept. What if your $400,000 produced passive income, income you received without having to work? For example, what if you made 12% in passive income from investing in certain stocks with your $400,000? Twelve percent of $400,000 is $48,000, so your $400,000 could give you $48,000 in income. When you divide that yearly income by 12 months, it amounts to $4,000 per month. You could live off that income indefinitely and be financially free. You would never have to work again.”

— Van K. Tharp

You might wonder if the $4,000 per month that person needed for financial freedom included taxes. It should, but if you meant $4,000 per month after taxes, then you either have to minimize your taxes or include them in your monthly number. The good news is that you’ll pay much less in taxes on passive income than you will on earned income. When your money works for you, the returns don’t get taxed by nearly the amount that your income gets taxed when you work for money.”

The importance of dividends in determining value in the stock market cannot be overstated. The main reason investors are willing to risk their capital in anything is to get a return on their investment. In the real estate market, that return is rent. In the money market, it is interest. And in the stock market, it is a cash dividend.

Folks who ignore the importance of dividends in making stock market selections are not investors. They are speculators. Speculators hope the price of a stock will go up and reward them with profits. Investors know that stocks that pay dividends go up too. Meanwhile, they are getting a return on their capital. They believe the old adage: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”

Most of the world is so caught up in getting and spending money that it hardly has time to notice the leaves.

And maybe it is better off for it.

A man puts his head down… he keeps his eye on the ball and his shoulder to the wheel… and he’s ready to make money. Or war.

And then, by the time his hair whitens and he retires from making money, it is too late. His sclerotic brain can learn no more new tricks. It has no flexibility… and no time to develop real taste and judgement.

That’s why the “self-made man” may be the least civilized of the species.

He is too busy to think and feel. He is getting rich in his youth. And then, when he is spending… that’s where the disaster of his life becomes apparent.

He has not taken the time to prepare himself. He cannot appreciate style… or wit… or charm… or intimacy.

In retirement, when he can no longer do the only thing he knows how to do – make money – he is nothing more than a coat on a stick rambling around a house far too big for him, a laughingstock to the young… an embarrassment to the old.”

…modern society looks bewildering to children. They are born with paleobrains, built from paleogenes, expecting a paleoworld: a close-knit social environment of kin-based hunter-gatherer clans.

Children are wired to learn and play the normal game of life for which they evolved: be cute, grow up, find food, make friends, care for kin, avoid dangers, fight some enemies, find some mates, raise some kids, grow old and wise, die.

Instead, they face a bizarre new world of frustrating duties and counterintuitive ideas: sit still, learn math, find a job, move away from friends, ignore kin, drive cars, leave kids in day care, and grow burdensome in old age.

They face this new world with minimal guidance. Their parents go away all day to make money, to buy things, to look good and special, and to attract extra attention from other men and women, despite having mated and reproduced already.

Their parents can’t explain why they pretend that they’re still in the mating market if they don’t actually want a divorce and custody battle. Their high school teachers can’t make sense of the consumerist world for them either, and their college professors can only suggest reading perplexing rants from postmodern French sociologists, such as Jean Baudrillard.

So, almost everyone grows up confused, passes through life confused, and dies confused.”